Indie Comix Fest 2025: Watershed for artists

Park Street, YWCA hall hosted comic artists, graphic novelists, and writers from all around India for the annual Indie Comix Fest, 2025. “This is a self-published festival for comics and graphic novels. I have brought my own comic anthology My Com, There’s also a preview of Lovecraft in India, which will come out in April next year. There were three sets of discussions: History of comics in Bengal by Rituparno Basu and Swagata Dutta Burman, A look at the comics scenario outside Bengal by Charbak Dipta, Partha Pratim Sarkar, and Sourav Dutta. And the last one was Fictional and Non-fictional Narratives by Anandini Sengupta, Aafreen Islam, Wree, and Manimanjari Sengupta, which was moderated by Deotima Sarkar. This festival is happening in Kolkata after 5 years.

We had to stop because of Covid. We will have one such event every year. We hope more people come and interact with us,” said Harsho Mohan Chattoraj, one of the organisers for the event, and a published graphic artist with publication houses all over India. There were also two workshops- Charbak Dipta handled fiction comics and the making, and Harsho Mohan Chattoraj handled non-fiction comics and making. The Statesman focused on the various aspiring, veteran, and novel authors and artists who had come to the event: Himangshu Vore and Rajasthan: Fenêtre (window in French) is a graphic novel by artist Manisha Naskar and writer Himangshu Vore. The novel shows a little girl running away from her home because she does not want to have a child marriage. Vore said, “This was supposed to be a film story initially, but for reasons it got dropped.

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It was written long ago, like 2010. Then, many years later, I thought of converting it into a graphic novel, and luckily, I stumbled upon Manisha. The communication just took off, and because of this project, I got her on board for a second one, which is scheduled to be published in January of 2026. This novel is very important to me because I personally travelled Rajasthan for a long time, and it kind of became a personal project.” The Sunderbans and graphic lore: Pritesh Chakraborty, assistant professor of English, is a dedicated graphic author and collector. He said, “The book we are showcasing here today is Graphikatha. There are teams of authors and artists, and it is exclusively stories of the Sunderbans from prehistoric to the modern age. The stories show how the Sunderbans is threatened by intruders , ecological loss, climate change, and exploitation by the colonial forces. We are very lucky to be present here at Indie Comix Fest, where a rare chance has been presented to independent comic artists to showcase their works.” Chakraborty has done his story with Dr Manish Mandal as the illustrator. Archival works in Bengal: Swagata Dutta Burman and CCC collaborated to create an anthology of comics specifically from Bengal, titled The Heroes of Bengali Comics.

Burman said, “The history of Bengali comics is never-ending; we will find more as we search for it. We may know Narayan Debnath, Mayukh Chowdhury, and Tushar Chatterjee, but there are a plethora of artists we are not aware of. Shukholota Rao, in 1921, had created Bengali comics, and there exist even predecessors to her. From 1921 to the present day, we have a history of more than a century of comics in Bengal. So the archiving was very important.” Rising stars of comics: Charbak Dipta has become a popular creator of comics for the younger generation. His imaginative remake of Sukumar Ray’s Haw Jaw Baw Raw Law to his series Lublur Prithibi Charbak shows remarkable works of graphic art that are vibrant, colourful, and very imaginative.

Cipta said, “I am very glad I have been invited to the second edition of this festival. I urge the organisers and the people to connect to this event and many such events, more so, we can have a sustainable ecosystem of comic artists and writers.” The youngest comic artist in the event was 17 years old, Anandini Sengupta. She has been working on comics since class 6. She shared, “My teachers had supported me when I drew comics on the blank pages of the practical notebooks in chemistry class. I am more of a writer. I have been published by Scholastic, the London Poetry Society.” Sengupta presented her Dr Acula graphic novel at the fest. The comic festival presented unique perspectives on the growing scene of graphic novelists. The medium of visual novels, which are colourful and most importantly imaginative beyond mundane, had a feeling of fun, exuberance, and joy. Graphic novels have become important and have gone into serious academia for dissection and theories.